by By Jennifer Harrison
The “Purity Culture” message of the 90s and 00s taught every 10–16-year-old in churches across America about “saving yourself for marriage”. If you sadly missed out on this, let me give you a quick example of Purity Culture’s main message: “Imagine you’re holding a flower. Look at how perfectly the petals lay. Now squeeze that flower and crumple it all up. Open your hand. Can you get that flower back to how it looked before you crumpled it? No, of course not. Will your future husband want your crumpled flower? No, of course not. Now wear this ring so everyone knows you’re still a virgin.”
While the concept of saving yourself for marriage and the damage done to one’s future marriage by fornication is something worth sharing, using the punishment of shame rather than the glory of holiness to do so misses the mark. At the same time, it’s no good leaving our children to think that purity prior to marriage is meaningless. While this is something that must be done, it must be done well. So, let’s take off our purity rings, roll up the sleeves on our graphic tees, and make a pinky promise that for the rest of this article, we’re going to talk about this in a way that will help them. Our desire for our kids to live holy, righteous, and pure lives is righteous, but for them to do so, they need to first hear and be wrecked by the Gospel.
In the first chapter of the Bible, we see a perfect example of purity. In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth — light and sky, land and seas, trees and plants, the sun and the moon, animals and people; and all of it was good. It was pure. Undefiled. Holy. But sin — sin of disobedience and idolatry — sullied the good life they had. Their sin made them impure.
This impurity is true of all of us: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Rom 3:23). And nothing we can do can make us clean enough to get back to Him. Our story does not start with our purity and our pursuit to maintain it, but rather with the reverse: an impurity that cannot be removed by anything other than the work of Christ.
Let’s reframe the purity analogy, but rather than a perfect flawless flower, it’s a bag of Cheetos. You might think that you like Cheetos, but you’re wrong and you should repent. Cheetos are the worst, mainly because of the cheesy, orange dust that permeates everything it touches with an irremovable neon dye. When the bag is closed, all you can see and touch is the bag, which is clean, but when you pop open the bag and pick up a Cheeto, you’re immediately filled with cheesy-fingered regret. No matter how hard that Cheeto tries to be clean, it’s still going to be messy. But when you close the bag, the Cheetos and the mess are gone.
This is what happens to us in Christ. Our impurity is swallowed up by His purity, and God, when he looks at us, looks at the pure clothing that has been placed on us.
For our children to pursue purity, it starts with recognizing that they are impure. They need to know they are a sinful and hopeless Cheeto. They need to know their only hope is in the bag. Purity (holy living) comes as a response to the great love the Father has for his Cheetos.
So, what’s a Cheeto to do?
First, we stay in the bag. We draw near to the Lord. James 4:7-8 says “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.” We pursue purity, not out of pride for how we will be viewed by others, or even primarily out of self-interest for finding a future spouse, but out of love for God and love for our future spouse. Why do we want to be pure? Because Christ loves us. Because our future husband or wife will be blessed by us having waited. The motivation moves from pride to humility and love.
From that place, we pursue purity from God Himself. We seek the wisdom that he so freely gives and then choose to live wisely. We flee from youthful passions and pursue righteousness. We aspire to live quietly and mind our own affairs.
Practically, this starts long upstream from just premarital sex. It looks like watching, listening to, reading, and speaking things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy. This means choosing to use our bodies to glorify and obey the Lord when we’re with our friends, our boyfriend/girlfriend, our siblings, and when we are alone.
It’s abstaining from watching porn. It’s abstaining from swearing and gossip. It’s abstaining from watching godless entertainment. It’s rejecting the impurity offered through music lyrics, even ones that might seem more benign, from Taylor Swift to Billie Eilish. And it’s even more than that: it’s rejecting the Cheeto dust wherever it finds us, being pure with every part of our life, right down to the pride in our hearts for waiting until marriage. If we do that, purity when it comes to premarital sex will seem much easier.